This was potentially the biggest match in the still recent history of the AKITA Handball Club. For both club, anything else than a win would potentially terminate their hopes of promotion to league 1. In their previous encounter, AKITA suffered their only loss of the season after coming back from 8 goals down to fail 1 goal short.
HYDRO was commited to their high defense in order to try to make the difference on the break whereas AKITA was faithful to its lower and team defense. The team speech reminded players to help each other in defense and to give options in attack.
After few neutralised attack on both sides, HYDRO opened the scoring. Norbert answered for AKITA. A penalty helped HYDRO to stay in front although Matsuo scored making marvels in a half left position. 3 goald by Hydro built cushion but AKITA kept their head cool and keep playing their games with 2 goals from Florian, 2 from Matsuo and 1 from Norbert against a lonely penalty (7 - 6 after 17 minutes). Twice HYDRO came back but both times Matsuo and Markus restored the advantage. A goal from Joakim after a good circulation of the ball even made it 10 - 8 but in the last 3 minutes, few good stops from HYDRO allowed them to equalise. A Michael goal was then cancelled by a penalty before the half time whistle.
Although AKITA did not manage to contain HYDRO as much as targeted, the team felt not much was missing and the coaches asked for a little more intensity to try to create the gap.
The second half started like the first Norbert scoring but Hydro half left answering back. It was obvious that the HYDRO team needed to work hard to stay in the match and was taking more and more risks to score goals. as Alex and Florian once again built a 2 goal advantage, HYDRO came back to 1 goal but that was the last time they stay within distance. They had reached the breaking point and AKITA was then able to anihilate completely the attacks of HYDRO. After a Florian goal, a PA interception started a series of 5 attacks without a shot on target from HYDRO. Interceptions from Norbert and Alex with few high shots resulted in goals from Michael, Yoann and Ulf and 3 more goals from Florian to make the score 21 - 13 !. After this amazing defensive speel, the intensity went down a notch and AKITA strolled for the last 5 minutes missing some good shooting opportunity and letting HYDRO score 3 in the last 2 minutes for a very convincing 21 - 16 victory.
With this win, AKITA set-up the perfect show-down with MAGIC for a title fight between the 2 teams to be promoted in League 1 (subject to official confirmation results of the other matchs). The match will be Sunday 2, May at 730PM in Choi-Hung. A perfect evening match full of suspens as AKITA won their first encounter by one goal only whereas MAGIC has gorwn stronger as the second phase started with huge vitories. The winner here will take it all!
No comments:
Post a Comment